What is tail fiber
A tail fiber is a protein structure on a bacteriophage that recognizes and binds to specific receptors on bacterial cells, initiating viral infection.
Definition and Structure
Tail fibers are protein appendages located at the distal end of a bacteriophage's tail, extending from a structure called the baseplate . They can vary in length and number; for example, the T4 bacteriophage has six long tail fibers (~145 nm) and six short tail fibers (~40 nm), each composed of multiple protein subunits . The distal tip of the long tail fiber, also called the receptor-binding domain, is responsible for recognizing the bacterial host .
Function
The primary function of tail fibers is to enable bacteriophages to recognize and attach to specific receptors on bacterial surfaces, a process known as adsorption . This initial binding is often reversible, allowing the phage to "scan" the bacterial surface for optimal attachment sites before committing to irreversible binding and injecting its DNA . Tail fibers undergo conformational changes upon binding, facilitating the subsequent steps of infection, including penetration of the bacterial cell wall and genome entry .
Host Specificity
Tail fibers are highly specific to particular bacterial receptors, such as lipopolysaccharides, outer membrane proteins, or teichoic acids, which determines the host range of the phage—the specific bacterial species or strains it can infect . Mutations in tail fiber genes can alter this specificity and the efficiency of phage attachment.
Applications
Because of their specificity, tail fibers are important in phage therapy, where bacteriophages are used to target antibiotic-resistant bacteria . Understanding tail fiber structure and function is also crucial for designing engineered phages for therapeutic or biotechnological purposes. In summary, tail fibers are essential molecular tools that allow bacteriophages to identify, attach to, and infect their bacterial hosts, playing a central role in the viral life cycle and potential medical applications.
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The crystal structure of a complex between the tail fibre and tail fibre assembly (Tfa) protein of Escherichia coli phage
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The predicted structure of the tail fiber revealed that the two amino acid residues are located on the surface of the tail
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Tail fibers determine the host range of a bacteriophage by binding to specific receptors on bacterial cells. They undergo
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Bacteriophage T4 initially recognizes its host cells using its long tail fibers. Long tail fibers consist of a phage-proximal
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Furthermore, phage tail fibers with confirmed, or potential, depolymerase activity, but no functional domain hits, were